NOW Nipper is no ordinary cat Well that s what she believes. She will not accept that she has reached, shall we call, mature years: the time in life when she would probably have a pension book and a bus pass, and be bombarded with literature from Saga Hol

NOW Nipper is no ordinary cat Well that's what she believes.

She will not accept that she has reached, shall we call, mature years: the time in life when she would probably have a pension book and a bus pass, and be bombarded with literature from Saga Holidays.

But not Nipper.

We experimented the other day by making a change to her usual Grub-o-Cat or whatever she has. It said quite clearly on the packet that it was for the "mature" cat.

Well, being almost 20 years old - and in human terms that's a lot of years - we believed that she deserved such pampering.

That was a mistake.

She went through her normal routine of turning circles and sticking claws in our legs as the excitement of feeding time arrived.

But then she discovered she was being given a pensioners' meal.

She took one look and rejected the whole bowl.

I believe she was thinking - cats do a lot of thinking - that she may be old in years, but in spirit she was still of the younger generation.

I mean, she thought, her coat was in perfect condition and she still had her own teeth.

For the rest of the day she set about proving that she was still active and alert.

She proved this with her usual trick of stealing the cheese out of a sandwich. After all, she is, quite partial to mature Cheddar, and even more ecstatic when there is an opportunity to acquire a piece of Red Leicester.

Then there is the trick of sitting in the middle of a newspaper at the part which is about to be read, let alone stealing the one armchair in the house, which she should know by now is really out of bounds.

And working at home becomes difficult when she decides to walk across the keyboard of the computer and sends an e-mail into the world of hi-tech. Perhaps she was sending for a cat-alogue.

So searching in the kitchen cupboard we discovered a packet of her regular Cat-o-Grub, and for a moment she seemed content. That was, of course, until the adult evening meal appeared and she remembered that she had acquired a taste for pork chops.

We decided then that we should not show her any age discrimination - especially as she is really a young-at-heart cat.